In the weeks in which the big fashion brands present their collections for the next seasons, a curious phenomenon occurs. Around the fashion shows and presentations you can feel the pulse of people who work around the world: you just need to look at editors, journalists, buyers and agents to grasp the latest trend, the definitive style gesture that defines them as people who understand fashion. It can be something as simple as the way you wear a piece, a color, or a pattern, and this season there’s a styling trick that does all three. controls: a bright red sweater tied at the waist or crossed over the shoulders.
This look emerged last August at Oslo Fashion Week, an event outside the big leagues, but within the urban trend circuit thanks to the great prescribing power of Scandinavian women. There was the influencer Tine Andrea Lauvli who tied a scarlet sweater at the waist to her baggy jeans, in a gesture as practical in the face of the uncertainty of the Nordic summer as it was effective: she added a touch of color that was impossible to avoid. The photo remained forever in the archive street style of the week.
A short leap in time brings us to New York Fashion Week. Here too, the gesture once again captured the interest of urban photographers: the editorial director Sarah Harris appeared one day with a bright red sweater crossed over a white t-shirt, and almost in parallel, the content creator Grece Ghanem – who owes her fame on social networks to her personal style, but also to her atypical profile: a 60-year-old microbiologist who fascinates fashion brands – wore another one to highlight her waist over a pink Tibi dress. In an interview for the magazine Net-à-PorterGrece says that for her “it’s not about a trend, but an attitude” and that “it’s about a piece that gives me confidence, joy and makes me shine.”
The final endorsement for the knotted red sweater was, perhaps, seeing the new director Rowing -or rather, the new ‘content manager’ of the newspaper, heir of Anna Wintour and daughter of Candice Bergen and Louis Malle- Chloe Malle arrives at a Mugler fashion show in Paris with a sweater draped casually over the shoulders of her floral shirt. Some niche brands had already toyed with the idea of pairing a red sweater over outfits that we wouldn’t have thought of a priori, like New York-based Irish designer María McManus in her Resort 2026 collection, or Loewe in its proposal for spring next year.
And shortly after, already in autumn, the red sweater with a round neck and long sleeves begins to appear everywhere and in all price ranges: in the same season we can buy it from Zara, from Arket, from Róhe, from COS, from Uniqlo, from Khaite or from The Row, to name some of the most influential urban style brands.
Red tones have always been associated with intense emotions, from passion to power. Gabrielle Chanel said it in one of her memorable phrases: “Red is the color of life, love and blood. It is the color of passion.”
In fact, there is a phenomenon called “the power tie”, according to which a red tie conveys an image of greater confidence and ability in corporate environments. Him power constraint It consolidated in the 1980s, when the professional image began to be understood as a tool of strategic leadership and here red functioned as a visual symbol of authority, confidence and determination. It is no coincidence that Donald Trump, Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton made the red tie their visual signature during key speeches.
The red sweater, for its part, speaks of belonging to another group, that of those who “know fashion”, who know perfectly the color of the season and who, moreover, have learned the art of wearing it in an apparently casual way, as if the trend they are building by wearing it was not theirs.
So if you notice that you I wait It’s too neutral and something is missing, consider putting a red sweater over it, a bit haphazardly, as if you hadn’t thought about how powerful a stylistic appeal it is.
